


Be The One

by apairofglasses



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Coming Out, Earth C (Homestuck), Engagement, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Marriage Proposal, the epilogue never happened
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:08:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25168240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apairofglasses/pseuds/apairofglasses
Summary: It had never been easy for Karkat, no matter how hard he’d tried not to vacillate. He loved the idea of it, the concept of romance, but something about him and it did not work. His love was too much. He was too much.---This is a story about Karkat coming out as monogamous to himself and proposing to Dave.
Relationships: Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas
Comments: 10
Kudos: 83





	Be The One

I see in blue, I see in blue, I see in blue   
Oh, and you see everything in red

And there's nothing that I wouldn’t do for you, do for you, do for you   
Oh, 'cause you got inside my head

Oh, but when you're gone, when you're gone, when you're gone   
Oh, baby, all the lights go out

Oh, baby come on, let me get to know you   
just another chance so that I can show   
that I won't let you down, oh no   
no, I won't let you down, oh no

'cause I could be the one

I could be the one

~*~

On Alternia, you segregated your feelings and your wants and needs and desires into neat little boxes and those relationships changed—frequently. You didn’t get too attached. It was easy. At least that’s how it was meant to be. 

It had never been easy for Karkat, no matter how hard he’d tried not to vacillate. He loved the idea of it, the concept of romance, but something about him and it did not work. His love was too much.  _ He _ was too much. 

When they watched the humans and their courtship rituals, they had scoffed, Karkat included. How little sophistication, they’d thought. How savage and unevolved. He’d been too scared to admit even to himself that he was different in yet another way. 

But maybe when Karkat had created the sun and the moon and the stars, this shameful, secret piece of him had snuck in there too. Maybe those feelings he’d always buried away—affection, pity, desire, jealousy—maybe those feelings, too abundant to cram into any one quadrant with any one troll and his want to feel  _ all _ of them all the time shaped the way humans loved. Maybe.

He’d seen the movies— _ all of them— _ troll and human alike and although the trope of engagement and marriage was nonexistent in Troll media, it sure as fuck sprawled over human media like a greedy parasite. 

A greedy parasite Karkat decided he didn’t mind one bit. There was something about the rituals that resonated with him—reciting your vows to someone, making that promise of loving “till death do us part,” signing a government document to make it official in the eyes of the law— it was the absolute antithesis of troll romance. He loved the surprise proposal down on one knee, the wedding and the reception. He loved the first dance together as a married couple and the cake with the two little caricatures perched on top. 

Karkat was happy now, on new Earth with Dave, happier than he’d ever been. There were so many things about Alternia he’d been glad to be rid of, and so many new things he embraced in the new world, but there was one more thing he desperately wanted to come out and say. 

He looked at rings for Dave. The one he would present to him when he asked to marry him would be perfect. It would say all of the things he wanted to say to Dave. 

The perfect ring was golden—like Dave’s hair—and the band curved at the center into two hearts. Inside each heart was a crimson stone that glistened like their shared blood. It was cheesy and tacky and so extremely uncool and Karkat knew it. 

But he also knew Dave would wear those two dumb hearts, claiming it was cool kid irony, when in reality he loved Karkat’s uncool and unironic love. He was happy to fill all the quadrants and then all the extra space Karkat had left over.

It was Karkat—bare and exposed in his queer, overwhelming, wrong, single-minded devotion to Dave—that Dave would proudly display on his finger. Karkat bought the ring, and a red velvet box to keep it in. 

They're lying in bed together when Dave, who’d seemed distracted all day, finally says, “Hey, I want to tell you something.”

Karkat had been laying with his head on Dave’s chest, letting himself be pet as he drifted in and out of a lazy slumber. Dave is nervous, Karkat can tell. He moves so he can look into Dave’s eyes as he speaks.

“There’s something I’ve been thinking about and I want you to know if you’re not into it, it’s something I don’t need to have on the table to be happy for the rest of my life with you. I will chuck it right off the table because we’re together, and we’re always going to be, and labels and ceremonies are stupid, and we don’t need them because we already know, but—” 

He fumbles behind him and takes out a box and fuck, Karkat could almost be mad Dave beat him to it if he weren’t equal parts delighted and cocooned in the knowledge that Dave wants the same things he does.

There’s a lump in Karkat’s throat and Dave is holding the box in his hand, not opening it just yet, and Karkat's heart  _ pounds _ to see what’s inside. Dave thumbs over the velvety exterior—he’s nervous—and keeps talking.

“I don’t really care that it’s stupid. Maybe it doesn’t have to be stupid. I love you a lot and I was wondering—do you want to get married? ” 

Karkat is crying. Not full-blown sobbing, but his eyes are wet and he feels open and raw and he would stay this way flayed to pieces in front of Dave forever. 

“Dave,” Karkat says, carefully, and retrieves his own ring box. His words get caught in his throat. _It’s not stupid_ , he wants to say. _We’re not stupid._ _There’s nothing and everything wrong with the two of us but at least we have each other._

“Can I see yours first?” Karkat asks, in a voice so soft he can barely hear it, but Dave does.

Dave always hears him.

His eyes are also wet and his fingers tremble when he opens the box and it takes Karkat's fucking breath away.

“I made it,” he says, and the three words are like a punch to Karkat's gut. Dave  _ made _ it for him. 

“Forged it in LOHAC,” Dave says. 

The band is mottled and imperfect. It shows the struggle Dave went through to create it. It’s catastrophically beautiful—just like him. Slivers of metal bend and warp around a jagged black stone, it’s—

“A piece of the meteor,” Dave says, his voice thick with emotion. "Where I fell in love with you.”

Karkat leans in to kiss him because there’s nothing else he can do. The kiss is salty and they both huff a small laugh against each other’s lips because they’re both crying. They’re unknowingly proposing to each other at the same time, and it's so ridiculous.

“I love it,” Karkat says, wiping his eyes on his sweater sleeve. “I love you. I want everyone to see it. I want everyone to know. I want to marry you so badly, I can’t fucking stand it.”

Dave's kissing him again and this time, it’s deep. Karkat clutches his arm. Dave cups his cheek in the palm of the hand that isn’t holding the ring. 

Karkat holds out his fingers to Dave and he's seen this scene so many times in the movies but now it’s happening to him. Dave takes the ring out of the box and slides it onto his finger. Karkat thinks about how many people are going to see it and how they will always know that he’s completely abandoned the idea of quadrants, that he is Dave’s and Dave’s alone.

The red box is still clutched in his sweaty hand and Dave looks at it, then at him. Karkat opens it so Dave can see his dumb, garish, heart-shaped band and Dave's eyes light up with understanding. He gets it. He gets Karkat every time. 

“It’s me,” Karkat says, in a small voice.  _ All of me _ , he thinks.  _ Every last excessive, crazy, unremarkable, beautiful piece. _

Karkat slides the ring onto his finger and presses himself close, his arms around Dave’s middle, Dave’s face pressed into his hair. This is where he gets to be for the rest of his life. He never needed quadrants not because he was too much, but because they were too small. Dave can hold  _ all _ of his love, in every form it takes. They both know it.

And now the rest of the world will know it too.

**Author's Note:**

> Dave struggled with his own identity as a queer person, fearing that society and his friends and family would not accept him for the way that he loved. Karkat struggled with his identity as a queer person too, fearing he would not be accepted for the way he wanted to love, but his queerness was essentially the standard on Earth A (possibly because he made it). Karkat sees himself in a queer relationship based on his divergence from the typical quadrant system while Dave sees himself in a queer relationship based on his divergence from earth heteronormativity. They've found the best partner, practice, and place to be happy with exactly who they are.
> 
> Song at the top and title are both from Be The One, Dua Lipa.


End file.
